The beginning of September Tapes tells us that eight tapes were found where the last known battle between Osama bin Laden and rebel forces took place; the film states that it's the collection of that footage. The tapes tell the story of documentary filmmaker Don Larson (George Calil; Band of Brothers, USA Network's Spartacus mini-series), who travels to Afghanistan a year after 9/11 in an attempt to document the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Along with him on his trip are his rarely speaking cameraman Sonny (Sunil Sadarangani) and his guide/translator Wali Zarif (Wali Razaqi). Through the course of the film, we (and Don's two companions) learn that Don lost his wife in one of the crashed airplanes on 9/11. We also learn that Don was in the Army for five years, which is something that comes in handy when he needs to use automatic weapons to defend himself and his companions. The filmmaking trio meets up with bounty hunter Babak Ali, who's on the trail of bin Laden, and are taken by Babak close to the front lines.

The concept behind September Tapes has a tremendous amount of potential  from dramatic scenes stemming from Larson dealing with the loss of his wife to suspenseful moments where the trio of filmmakers avoid dangerous situations. Unfortunately, the film never lives up to the full potential of that concept. Part of the problem is that Don Larson is not a sympathetic character in the least. In multiple instances, he puts his crew in extreme danger without telling them why or when he's going to do it. The audience also never gets an opportunity to know Larson well enough to care whether he lives or dies. A much larger problem is that while the film is shot in a "realistic" documentary style, complete with shaky handheld camerawork, some of the situations depicted in the film are so unrealistic they break the illusion the film attempts to convey, that these events really happened.

By far the most unrealistic portion of the film is when Larson decides that in order to get to the right contacts he needs to get arrested and put in jail with bin Laden's supporters. He then proceeds to taunt the Kabul police and goads them into arresting him. Larson gets out of jail 12 hours later looking none the worse for wear and informs us he got a five-hour lecture from a general, who also gave him the name of a bounty hunter who's going to the front lines. This, in a country with a police force and criminal population that has no love for Americans. The whole situation is simply a deus ex machina to get the filmmakers to their next step, following a bounty hunter. The artificiality of the events pulls the audience out of a film that's trying so hard otherwise to look realistic. A half-hour into the film I stopped caring whether the three filmmakers lived or died. (Although one can make a safe assumption from the start as to what happened to them, since the movie said the footage was found lying around in Afghanistan.)

Don Larson (George Calil) gets arrested

Of course, any fiction film that attempts a documentary look and feel immediately draws comparison to The Blair Witch Project. While the two films share many of the same elements  documentary filmmakers, shaky handheld cameras, the tapes "discovered" afterwards, and no name stars  some of the elements that made Blair Witch work are missing, the biggest ones being believable reactions by the actors and situations that don't fit the world the movie's attempting to portray. Where Blair Witch had actors who really did seem scared, September Tapes has actors moving from situation to situation oftentimes with muted reactions or taking on a completely out-of-place persona. Documentary filmmaker Don Larson transforms into an unbelievable Die Hard-esque character, fighting back against Al Qaeda with automatic weapons, chasing after his attackers and continually putting himself and his two crewmates in increasingly dangerous situations.